According to the paper's sources, the packaging company pays the biker gang a retainer to have gang members on call for debt-collection runs. A relationship between the two groups allegedly started several years ago after Visy sold a large number of boxes to criminals connected with the fruit and vegetable industry who subsequently refused to pay for them.

"So Visy kind of had to find someone of equal status to the market heavies to collect what was owed by the sort of people who just ignore requests from traditional debt collectors," a former senior employee at Visy reportedly told the paper.

In 2007, the billionaire was fined $36 million after it was revealed that he had entered Visy into a four-year price-fixing scheme with packaging rival Amcor, which reportedly cost Australians $700 million. Then in 2009, Pratt was linked to Hells Angels after police discovered drugs inside trucks that Visy had contracted from a Hells Angels-owned company.